


dancing between aisles

by tangentiallly



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-20 10:24:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22015918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentiallly/pseuds/tangentiallly
Summary: Beatrice shops for condiments and spices, and dances between the aisles.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	dancing between aisles

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: I don't own ASOUE

Beatrice stood in front of the section for condiment and spices at the general store. She had been standing in front of the section for condiment and spices at the general stores for like 20 minutes.

Though, to be fair, standing wasn’t quite an accurate description.

She’d been dancing. 

Not like, large movements with turns and flips, no. There was definitely room for improvement when it came to the level of elaborate movements or dramatic ones. She was simply shaking her body, making arm movements, bouncing her whole body up and down with her legs, those kind of small things. The kind of dance people dance when they were at a general store, if they were the kind of people like Beatrice Baudelaire, anyway.

After splitting the tasks with R and Lemony, Beatrice was in charge of buying some very specific spices that R and Lemony had listed. They even listed the brand name they wanted for each. And now Beatrice was standing - not an accurate description, but it would have to do for now - in front of 5 shelves of condiments and spices and why were there _so many_ and they were so colorful and just - _so many_. Like, sure, it’s beautiful, but it’s also disorienting and the organizing system didn’t seem very good, because there were the same brand of spices at different parts of the shelves and they didn’t seem to be alphabetically organized or anything. How was she going to find something she needed? Very specific things she needed, she thought.

There was a song playing in the general store, and she swayed her body to the rhythm of the song and the lyrics played along in her brain. She’d been dancing earlier as she moved between the aisles too, trying to get to the condiments and spices section. She’d been lightly slow bouncing as she glided between the aisles, quite immersed in the music, before remembering “oh wait I have to buy the spices on the list L and R gave me”, and then refocused on her task again.

“So, garlic salt,” she said to herself as she looked at the wide variety of spices again. Very beautiful, not good enough organized. Did they even have a system? She should ask Dewey later if there was any system for categorizing condiments and spices. Dewey would know. She’d seen several small bottles of garlic salt now, just not the specific brand Lemony and R specified. Beatrice couldn’t believe they didn’t place all the garlic salt together, it would’ve been much easier.

She looked at the beautiful wall of color spices again and her brain was refusing to parse the information from the image, refusing to find what she needed for her, but she still made herself try as she leant in closer and read the words on the small bottle in front of her. It read tumeric. Her brain refused to process all the words on the bottles beside it, and above it, and below it. She slowly backed away from the bottles and danced to the music instead. A very catchy pop song was playing right now, it was only right to dance. Beatrice knew some of her friends did not like catchy pop songs, but she suspected that might just be because Esme had declared those ‘in’ and it was a principle to dislike what Esme liked. But Beatrice liked whatever she wanted to like, whether Esme liked it or dislike it or thought it was in or thought it was out. She didn’t care. She knew she had great taste, even if Esme happened to like or not like the same thing.

She waved her hands as she looked at the wall of spices without really taking any information in from it. She swayed her body to the rhythm of the song. Shopping was really fun.

Two songs later, she remembered that she was supposed to be shopping. She sighed, and thought to herself perhaps she should search systematically from the top of the rightmost shelf and go down and then go slightly left and start from the top and go down again. Sounded like a solid plan.

(Eventually, she found everything she needed, although she got distracted with her own dancing a couple of times as she was searching systematically.)

Beatrice sighed in contentment when she realized that she was finally done and found everything she wanted, and skipped towards the cashier. She smiled brilliantly and dazzlingly at the cashier.

* * *

(A day later)

“Anyway, it was just so unorganized, you know? I mean, there is a system, I think, it’s just not a very good one, because it didn’t help me find things. No pattern of it all. Horrible. Unlike your library, where I can find a book I want easily, unless you had already stolen it away to your desk or somewhere else.” Beatrice told Dewey as she danced in between the bookshelves in the library.

“It’s not stealing, this is my library and if I take a book out to read, that hardly count as stealing,” Dewey pointed.

“Semantics,” Beatrice waved his corrections away. “Plus, there are worse things than theft. That’s the wisdom I always go by.”

“Did you pay for your condiments and spices?” Dewey asked curiously.

Beatrice just smiled mysteriously. “Anyway! If anyone could invent a good way of organizing those, I think it would be you. You should have one in the hotel! Very good for people who are particular about cooking. Not me, of course, but I know people who are. I mostly care about making the end result look pretty, you know? If I arrange the salad very nicely on fancy plates, people will think I’ve been cooking all day. Often, when cooking, the presentation of the food can be as important as the food itself. It’s a great trick, you’re welcome.”

“Thanks?” Dewey offered, looking amused.

Beatrice grinned at him. “Want to dance?” She extended out a hand, and with only a moment of consideration, he walked forwards and took it.

“Sure,” he said, “I don’t really get much chance to dance. It’s not very fun to just dance by myself, and it’s really hard to convince Bertrand to.”

“He’s just shy, you need to coax him out of his shell,” Beatrice said confidently. “Let me teach you a few useful moves!”

**Author's Note:**

> [come say hi on tumblr](https://beatricebidelaire.tumblr.com)


End file.
